Techno-economics of bio-power in Malaysia

Malaysia has electric power generation capacity of 24,000 MW of which 98% from non-renewable resources. In 8th Malaysian Plan, the government introduced renewable energy (RE) in its energy supply mix. Estimates show Malaysia has renewable electricity production potential of 11,800 MW of which 5,000 MW from biomass. The government introduced Feed-in Tariff (FiT) mechanism to encourage investment in the renewable power sector. In the present studies, techno-economics analysis has been performed on a steam-Rakine cycle plant with assumed plant capacity of 10 MW. The cost of electricity production is estimated as 9.4 ¢/kWh (base case). Technological and economic specific uncertainty analysis has also been performed to study the impact of uncertainties on electricity production costs. Among the parameters, most significant are energy efficiency, equipment and feedstock costs. The economics of scale was also studied and compared with FiT tariffs.